UKFast bit barn yarn: 'Cisco switch glitch' leads to service ditch

CEO awaits technical report

Updated Manchester-based hosting outfit UKFast has fingered a Cisco switch as the root cause of a service wobble that has caused grief for some customers.

"Engineers received multiple network alerts affecting part of our infrastructure," the business said in a status alert at 0927 BST this morning about an outage that started at 2250 BST last night.

"UKFast and infrastructure engineers immediately began to investigate and were able to restore service for the majority of clients. A fault was traced to our core routing platform and has now been resolved."

CEO Lawrence Jones told us an as-yet-unspecified technical glitch with a "Cisco switch" was behind the issue, "everything connected to that switch needed to be rebooted".

Any clients that saw residual problems this morning were potentially affected by switches being replaced and powered up, he said.

UKFast, which claims to have around 5,500 customers, is still awaiting a technical report from Cisco, "all of the [switching] infrastructure is Cisco".

Jones said only a relatively small number of customers were affected. "Businesses have these sorts of issues all the time." There weren't exactly a flood of complaints filling up its Twitter stream.

The last – and comparatively more significant – service cul-de-sac that UKFast found itself in was back in December when workmen in Manchester cut a cable with a pickaxe so the incoming mains supply was lost to the bit barn and generators failed to pick up the slack.

We've asked Cisco for comment.

Updated

A Cisco spokeswoman sent us a statement:

“Cisco’s top priority is the satisfaction of our customers, we are aware and engaged in a comprehensive review of the situation.” ®